The present invention relates to medical-surgical breathing filters, and is more particularly concerned with breathing filters that include electrostatic filter media.
Electrostatic breathing filters have been used since the early 1980s to filter breathing gases. The filter media consists of polypropylene fibers which have been made electrostatic by a corona discharge process. The fibers are needled so that they intertwine, thus forming a relatively flat filter pack which electrostatically captures particulate from gases moving through the filter's open passageways. Electrostatic filters are effective as bacteria and viral filters in medical device breathing filters, but are not considered to be HEPA filters. Their use can nevertheless be justified by their filtration effectiveness as well as by their relatively low cost. Electrostatic filter packs do not need to be hermetically sealed around their periphery as particulate is attracted and attaches to the surfaces of the fibers. It is only necessary that the construction of a filter housing containing an electrostatic filter pack includes internal means, such as peripheral annular baffles, to direct the flow of gas towards and over the surface of the filter media.
Electrostatic filters are not effective in filtration of liquids as liquids tend to quickly discharge the electrostatic fibers. Liquids can also easily penetrate through the filter's open passageways. Therefore, when used in a breathing filter, an electrostatic filter pack should be shielded from contact with body fluids such as mucosal secretions since these fluids tend to neutralize the electrostatic charge, making filtration less efficient. Further, body fluids could pass through the filter media, exposing other parts of the breathing systems to possible contamination. Hydrophobic (water repellant) membranes are known and have been used to prevent passage of fluids. More particularly, electrostatic breathing filters have been fabricated with a combination of a hydrophobic membrane, electrostatic filter media, scrim (a non-woven polypropylene mesh) and, in some cases, another hydrophobic membrane. This combination has been used to protect the media body from fluids that would otherwise tend to enter it from either direction.
Filter packs of the aforementioned type, i.e., using one or two hydrophobic membranes, filter media, and scrim are fabricated with the outside periphery of the pack heat-sealed in a manner that causes the pack to become one single unit. Such a single unit filter pack is then placed within two halves of a filter housing, and the housing is welded or glued to enclose the filter pack therein. Pinch rings have sometimes been provided near the periphery of the filter housing to hold the single unit filter pack in place and to prevent bypass of fluid around the outside periphery of the filter pack. This arrangement, however, because of plastic and filter pack dimensional tolerance stack up, does not assure that fluid will not flow between the pinch rings and filter pack.
An alternate method of obtaining a fluid seal has been to encapsulate the periphery of the single unit filter pack with a flexible sealant such as silicone, and to then depend upon pinch rings in the housing to compress against the flexible sealant. This approach increases the expense of the manufacturing process and, as in the previously described method of fabrication, fails to assure the presence of a hermetic seal that prevents passage of fluid through the device.
The present invention is intended to provide a method of manufacture which is less expensive than methods suggested heretofore, and which results in the production of a hydrophobic electrostatic breathing filter that eliminates the foregoing problems.